The American by Henry James6/8/2023 More recently, James scholarship has focused on sexuality and gender, race and morality, and the nature of consciousness critical trends Simon also considers. But beginning in the 1940s, such critics as Trilling, Rahv, Leavis, and, most influentially, Leon Edel secured James's place at the forefront of the American canon. She also shows how James's reputation became contested after his death: praised by some critics for psychological insight and stylistic innovation, he was dismissed by others as socially and politically irrelevant. James himself worked to secure that place with his prefaces to the standard edition of his works Simon analyzes criticism about those prefaces. The story begins in the 1870s, when critics saw James's works as mirrors of American identity and sought to establish him in the nation's evolving canon. Linda Simon chronicles and analyzes James criticism beginningwith contemporary newspaper and magazine reviews and ending with current academic criticism. Comprehensive survey and analysis of the scholarship and criticism on perhaps the greatest American writer.Īlthough some of Henry James's contemporary critics deemed him just short of a great writer, history has elevated him to indisputable preeminence in the American canon.
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